


when a man loves a woman

by philthestone



Category: Jurassic Park - All Media Types, Jurassic World Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, NO spoilers for fallen kingdom, and a special guest appearance by Ian Malcom, if u want me to accept jurassic park 3 as canon, then u can ofc expect me to write a ridiculous rom com to fix it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-25 04:10:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14968802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: Owen vetoed Ian Malcom's career advice because he hasstandards, not because he wanted his next job to be Unwitting Accomplice Number Two in Gray's quest to rekindle the epic love of two elderly dinosaur scientists.Claire, that traitor, is absolutely no help at all.





	when a man loves a woman

**Author's Note:**

> this is pure silliness because i maintain that fallen kingdom should have just been a rom com fix-it for the SLANDER that is jurassic park 3. 
> 
> reviews are well beloved and a word to the wise -- never write fic from the POV of a character whose entire function is delivering dramatic one-liners and standing around looking pretty. it's SO hard

He’s not sure how exactly he finds himself having lunch with Dr. Alan Grant every Thursday afternoon at an hour normally too late for lunch and too early for dinner, sitting across a new-looking desk in a Cal State university office. 

If you asked him, Owen would swear up and down he could not actually tell you what happened that resulted in this arrangement. Mostly, universities as institutions that bleed you dry of all your money piss him off. Academics themselves aren’t necessarily always so bad, when they’re not being elitist assholes. And Owen supposes that in this particular field, he’s not completely out of his element, so if they  _ were _ elitist assholes, he has enough crap in his proverbial arsenal to make them look bad.

“That’s probably why you’re having lunch with Alan Grant every Thursday,” says Claire, with this knowing gleam in her eye that Owen is used to by now even if he never can guess what she’s supposed to be knowing until it’s spelled out.

She’s sipping herbal tea from her spotless white mug because she drinks herbal tea now, coffee’s been relegated to special occasions only, and checking her emails on the balcony with her pale, pretty feet propped up on a different, equally California-esque balcony chair. They have a balcony now. It looks out on the beach.

It’s pretty nice, Owen supposes, even though he’s still not entirely sure how they  _ got _ here, cohabiting an apartment in an arguably healthy fashion and being relatively productive members of society. Drinking herbal tea.

“Sure, yeah,” says Owen, frowning at the balcony railing and scratching at his cheek. “He’s a weird guy.”

“Mmhmm.”

“He has a fossilized raptor claw on his desk.”

Claire pauses mid-tea-sip and arches one perfect ginger eyebrow, half a smile forming behind her lips. He knows her well enough to know that she’s not going to  _ actually _ say anything, but what she  _ means _ to say is ,”You’re a weird guy too.” Because of the damned raptor claw.

“God,” says Owen, defeated by his own predictability or something, and Claire smiles in full.

**

Most days, they just sit and talk. On paper Owen’s a professional consultant, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean, even though he like, has a real job now at one of the local dog shelters. Which is cliched as all hell but he got the job a month After and hasn’t had the heart to quit yet, so all in all being paid peanuts every so often to geek out about dinosaurs with Alan-freaking-Grant is not the worst thing in the world.

Off paper, though, it’s not a real job. More like -- some kind of weird as hell coping mechanism, which Owen figures is as much for the old man as it is for him.

After three weeks of surreal lunchtime experiences Owen puts the overpriced Subway sandwich he got from the crappy cafeteria downstairs down and says,

“You know, we met when I was a kid.”

Grant pauses, fork hovering over his ravioli for only a moment.

“Huh,” he says.

“Yeah,” says Owen. He adds, “You scared the shit outta me.”

“Huh,” says Grant again.

“Yeah,” says Owen, again.

“I used to hate children,” Grant says, like that’s some kind of explanation, and then doesn’t follow up with the “used to”. Owen says, “You got me really into velociraptors and here I fuckin’ am,” in response to that, which makes Grant’s eyes narrow, and then widen very slightly, before he bursts out laughing.

He’s got a full, rich laugh, even though he looks every bit the part of grumpy old bearded coot, even if right now it makes Owen feel a little bit like he’s being laughed  _ at _ . Belatedly, Owen hopes that he’s never going to look every bit the part of grumpy old bearded coot, and thinks back to all those times where they had long patches of rough days at the paddock and at the end of them Barry had to nag him into actually shaving.

Barry’s in France, now, working in construction. Owen misses him kind of a lot, which probably means he needs to call him again and complain that his only friends are Claire, the dogs at the shelter, a traumatized old paleontologist and two teenage boys who insist on Skype-calling him at least twice a week.

Barry would laugh at him, probably, but Owen’s used to Barry laughing at him in a way he’s not, not exactly, with Grant.

Grant leans back like he’s regarding Owen. Owen thinks that he probably wouldn’t be here if Grant’s own emotional baggage got in the way of him being oddly companionable and understanding. 

“Huh,” says Grant a third time, still leaning back. 

Owen takes a bite of his sandwich. 

“I mean, you were right,” says Owen, mouth full, as vaguely as possible.

Grant says, “Ellie did try to tell me I scared you.” And then, belatedly, his smile gets weird, like he suddenly has a stomach ache.

Owen decides not to ask, and makes a mental note to find food somewhere other than Subway next time.

**

He can’t decide if it would be too weird to ask Grant if he has a family. Mostly it seems like he doesn’t, only sometimes he’ll be talking on the phone when Owen knocks on the door, half a tired smile on his face, the kind Owen knows from experience now is unique. He’s got a faded photograph on the desk of himself and a couple of kids half asleep against what appears to be a hospital bench and that’s it, no other explanation or paper trail leading to anything more. He  _ did _ say he used to hate kids, Owen thinks, but there’s that photo, anyway. 

And once, Owen walks in through the door right as an oddly familiar face leaves, and he has only half a moment to process the lopsided grin he’s offered and the, “Don’t work too hard, Alan!” tossed back through the door before the guy is gone and Owen is realizing,

“Was that Ian Malcom?”

“Asshole,” Grant says dryly, but with a fond sort of smile that Owen knows only comes up in reference to friends.

“I saw him on TV,” Owen says. “Y’know.”

“Ian always has something to say,” says Grant, in the beleaguered tone of someone who has experienced this first hand, so Owen figures that  _ friends _ is the correct description. He himself never liked Malcom much, from what he’d seen, but whatever -- traumatic events, or something.

His therapist said they could be bonding experiences, back when he had a therapist and was the unemployed homeless guy pretending to sleep on Claire’s couch except never actually sleeping while Masrani Corp offered them all cheques of what Barry scoffed at and Claire pinched her lips at and Owen called bloodmoney in profoundly bad taste. He doesn’t have a therapist anymore, isn’t technically a homeless guy because it’s  _ their _ couch now, and mostly sleeps well, only has panic attacks once in a blue moon in the too-cold organic meats isle at Wholefoods.

Owen hates Wholefoods.

But he’s not entirely unfamiliar with the concept of family, anymore --  _ real _ family, with real human beings, and not a group of prehistoric birds that occasionally tried to take a chunk out of his arm not entirely on purpose. Like, people that he cares about and who care about him, mostly unconditionally. Traumatic events and all that shit, though he can’t say that he  _ didn’t  _ think Claire was one of the most formidable, beautiful women he’d ever met before they almost died together.

At any rate, he’s pretty sure family is more than the never-lessening stack of undergrad papers on Grant’s desk and his very sincere questions about how velociraptor’s eyes blink, but it’s none of his business, either.

“Karen asked us to come visit,” says Claire one evening. “Sometime soon. What do you think?”

“In Wisconsin?” asks Owen, and then, “We should get a bird,” and belatedly realizes that he probably should have thought this conversation through before starting it. 

To her credit, Claire does not say, “No, Owen, we are not getting a bird.”

Claire says, “You’d have more fun with a dog. And yes, in Wisconsin.”

They’re making dinner, which means Claire is sitting on the counter and organizing the chopped vegetables into neat colour-coordinated piles and Owen is making dinner. She has a job now, too, working as a financial analyst in a small out-of-the-way firm that either never actually looked her name up or was so desperate for a competent hire that they looked her name up and decided they didn’t care either way. Claire, Owen knows, is a very competent hire. Not in everything, but in financial analysis, yeah.

She scoops up her mug of herbal tea and nudges the broccoli into a more even circle, and smiles at him. Her smile, he thinks, is amazing. He knew that before the traumatic events.

“Dogs are more work though,” he says.

“I know.” 

“Uh. Right. ‘S Wisconsin good with you?”

“Wisconsin is good with me,” says Claire, soft, exhaling, flexing her sore feet. She didn’t know what family meant, entirely, either, Owen thinks -- not before. It’s kinda funny, if he thinks about it.

A bunch of jerks with issues who almost got eaten by dinosaurs and now they have semi-normal lives. Owen’s not sure what that’s supposed to mean.

**

He brings it up on Thursday without entirely knowing why, until Grant says, “If you want a bird that’s half-intelligent the noises it makes are too damn familiar,” over the top of a stack of graded undergrad papers. “You wake up at night pissing yourself.” 

Owen figures that degree of intimate wording means Grant tried getting a bird, too.

“Okay,” he says, once again making dinner. Claire peeled the onions, this time; she’s improving, doesn’t burn water in the microwave anymore, at least. “A dog.”

“It won’t fit in the apartment,” says Claire, fielding emails on her phone, making a face. Her nose scrunches up and it’s adorable and Owen thinks that she’s so smart, really smart, the smartest person he knows. He reaches over and thumbs her nose, grins when she drops her hands into her lap to roll her eyes at him and then reaches over to steal her phone.

“I have  _ emails _ ,” she says, reaching up, and it’s kind of funny how short she is. Her nephews are both taller than her, so is her sister. He’d say maybe that’s why she wears those damn heels all the time but he knows that’s not really it, has never really been it, and anyway, those heels are -- something else entirely.

“We’re making  _ dinner _ ,” Owen says back, and holds it way up above his head. 

“This isn’t going to make me say yes to the dog,” she tells him, grinning, still straining on her tiptoes to get the phone, bangs curling against her forehead. “You see dogs every day.”

“Claire, c’mon.”

She falls back on her heels, reaches over to scoop up her mug from the counter. “Do you want any tea?”

“You know my thoughts and opinions on leaf water, Ms. Dearing,” he says, and pours too much olive oil over the strained spaghetti.

“Hm.”

“And that’s still not a no,” he adds. She laughs. They eat their spaghetti on the balcony.

**

He meets Dr. Ellie Sattler on a Thursday, which means that he didn’t make a mistake and come at a wrong time on a wrong day or anything. Grant just forgot to tell him that their meeting was cancelled, or in fact forgot what day it was entirely because of this woman who’s getting up from the chair Owen usually sits in to shake his hand.

“This is, uh, Doctor -- Doctor Ellie Sattler, she’s an old friend of mine,” says Grant, and then straightens the pencil mug on his desk and clears his throat.

“Call me Ellie,” she says, and Owen remembers -- right, yeah, there was another PhD the first time besides Grant and Malcom and Gray’s even read some of her stuff --

“Paleobotanist, right?” he says. She’s a tall woman, laugh lines mingling with stress lines around her eyes, blond hair tied in a messy ponytail and not quite grey yet. She’s got a firm handshake and a kind smile; Owen trusts her immediately, which probably says something, because Owen used to spend most of his time with highly-intelligent prehistoric carnivores and trust was a precious commodity.

“That’s right,” says Dr. Ellie Sattler, and then, “but wait -- did you have a meeting? Oh, Alan, you should’ve said something -- I can wai --”

“No, no meeting,” says Grant, patting down the thighs of his pants, which are immortally khakis, and doing a strange thing between a nod and a head shake. Owen respects the immortal khaki, and is also not obtuse enough to not get it when an old man is trying to telepathically communicate with him and failing, so he says, “Yeah, uh, I can come back later.”

“It was nice to meet you,” says Dr. Ellie Sattler, and Owen says, “You too ma’am,” accepts another firm handshake and salutes a fidgeting Grant, who in all honesty Owen has never seen fidget before at all, he didn’t even think Grant was capable of fidgeting, what is  _ happening _ here, over her shoulder.

**

“It was the most surreal thing I’ve ever experienced,” says Owen later, out for coffee because they’re the kind of people who go out for coffee now apparently. Claire doesn’t have coffee, though, just herbal tea, which is iced, this time.

“What, Dr. Grant knowing a woman?”

“ _ No _ \-- well,  _ yeah _ \-- Jesus, Dearing.” Owen makes a face. He has sand in his shoes because he went for a run on the beach earlier and he’s not sure how to explain that the entire interaction felt like he was watching Grant eat his own hat.

He decides to say it like that, because why not.

“Has he mentioned her before?”

Owen stops, and realizes that he has. Several times. All of them end with Grant looking like he has a stomach ache and changing the subject, which Owen belatedly realizes is familiar in its likeness to his own experience the second month After, as he officially took on the role of Claire’s unemployed homeless friend who slept on her couch and was a little in love with her only it’d been so long since either of them had said anything about it that the prospect of starting the conversation again was the metaphorical equivalent of pulling teeth. Or dying via dinosaur.

He wonders if that, too, is in bad taste.

“God. You don’t think.”

Claire raises both eyebrows up high in a way that’s only very slightly teasing. He used to think it was something she’d do to make you feel bad about yourself but now he knows she’s just really bad at the general concept of how to tease, and also her older sister raises eyebrows the exact same way. It’s kind of endearing.

Owen bites his lip and taps his fingers against his coffee cup.

“Huh,” he says. “ _ Huh _ .”

**

It’s not like he means to intervene intentionally -- hell, Owen’s glad to stay entirely out of the love life or lack thereof of an old man he only talks to for professional and academic purposes for the rest of foreseeable eternity -- but Owen has also forgotten how spectacularly he can underestimate Dearings.

“Are they in love? Were they ever married? Were they going to get married but then didn’t because the lingering psychological effects of trauma aren’t a good basis upon which to build a relationship?”

That last line is definitely a direct quote from Gray’s Aunt Claire, if Owen remembers correctly, and Owen usually remembers correctly. It no longer stings, even though it definitely did just a little the first time it was uttered. 

“Gray,” he says, “I don’t  _ know _ . Let your mom focus on driving.”

“I’m driving just fine,” says Karen from the front seat, looking far too interested in Gray’s line of questioning for the upkeep of Owen’s sanity. Apparently the soured ending of her own marriage has not made her any less interested in the potential success of others’. Or maybe she just wants to make sure her kids still believe in love or something, which is fair, Owen supposes, that’s  _ fair _ , only given the fact that Gray has now launched into talking about how he read three books on successful relationships in this last year alone and Karen is saying, “ _ Gray _ , those are for  _ adults _ !” and Zach is snickering out, “Dude, gross,” and Claire is sighing happily and leaning her head against the car window on her passenger side, Owen thinks that they’re probably all doing -- mostly okay. About as okay as he and Claire are doing.

Though he does, secretly, wish that they’d decided to splurge on a rental. Not just because his knees are squished uncomfortably against the back of Zach’s seat -- he’s okay with all five of them piling into the cramped inside of Karen’s Prius and Gray hasn’t let go of his arm since the plane landed, anyway -- but because in a profoundly miscalculated move he made a passing comment about the state of Alan Grant’s romantic life five miles out of the airport parking lot and now the family wants to launch an intervention.

It’s a little surreal.

“You should ask him,” says Gray seriously, after the ruckus has died down. “If he still loves her, I mean. People shouldn’t waste an opportunity to  _ find love _ .”

“Gray, relax,” says Zach from shotgun, for which Owen is profoundly grateful. Until the kid grins and adds, “but you totally should though, that’d be so freaking funny.”

“It would be  _ romantic _ ,” Gray insists. Owen stops to wonder how a thirteen year old boy has retained such a strong unironic belief in romance, and looks across the backseat to Claire, who of course comes to his rescue not at all.

“As long as it wouldn’t be an invasion of his privacy,” she says, with a gleam of interest in her eyes that is remarkably similar to her sister’s.

_ Invasion of privacy my ass _ , Owen mouths at her over the top of Gray’s head, only Karen evidently catches him somehow because Gray says, “Mom, why are you making a disapproving face at me in the rearview mirror.”

“I’m not, I’m not!” says Karen, hasty, as she makes a smooth turn into their Wisconsin driveway. Claire smothers a laugh behind her hand. Zach says, “You were, mom, I saw you.”

Owen sighs in defeat. 

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll ask him.”

Over the sound of Gray’s cheering, Owen wonders how that conversation would even go, and then realizes that he would probably rather eat  _ his _ own hat rather than go through with it, and then wonders how stealthy he’ll have to be to sneak Not Doing It past Gray’s radar. Claire will laugh.

Owen’s okay with that. Her laugh is wonderful. 

Unbuckling his seatbelt, Zach asks, “Hey, can we get pizza for dinner?” which successfully diverts everyone’s attention to the arduous task of repeating, “Please, mom?” at a hundred miles per second and Owen doesn’t think about Alan Grant and Dr. Ellie Sattler for the next three days.

**

He’s forcibly reminded of them on Wednesday, when he runs into Grant at Wholefoods. 

God, Owen hates Wholefoods.

Claire doesn’t, though -- she’s very partial to their pink coloured kombucha and two of their herbal tea brands -- and she’s the one who grabs his arm as he’s frowning down at the dinosaur mascot on a box of children’s cereal and says,

“Owen!  _ Owen _ . That’s him, right?”

Owen looks up to the sight of Alan Grant contemplating a rack of flower arrangements like they hold the secrets to the known universe.

He looks back at Claire, who is biting her bottom lip very innocently, but who has a distinctly impish gleam in her eyes. Owen regrets his very existence as a person for corrupting Claire into being the teasing, marginally less uptight goofball she secretly always was in public now and puts the hand not holding pink kombucha on his hip.

“Oh, no. Nuh uh.”

“You promised Gray,” she says, earnest, eyebrows raised. “And anyway, it’s impolite not to say hello.”

“We’ll say hello,” says Owen, because he pretty much can never say no to her, “but like hell are we --”

“Oh, for God’s sake Owen.  _ Discreetly _ .”

Owen has no idea how such an inquiry could be discreet. Then again, Claire has always had an arsenal of things she excels at that confound him. He too has an arsenal of things  _ he _ excels at that confound her, but among those not a single one includes, “un-offensively asking famous paleontologist Alan Grant if he’s perusing the flower arrangements so he can ask out his old paleobotanist friend because they promised a thirteen year old child that they would”. Owen inhales. Then exhales. Then realizes that Claire is already tucking her purse under one arm and their carton of yogurt under the other and marching towards their oblivious victim.

Owen wishes she would remember the fact that she once hesitated to introduce herself to Grant for fear of what she called the inevitable unspoken blame regarding the disaster that was the Park, but maybe Owen’s piecemeal stories about the guy have eased her nerves. Or maybe lingering survivor’s guilt has been abandoned in favor of meddling in other people’s love lives.

Admittedly, Owen thinks that the latter is definitely preferable to perseverating on lingering trauma that you’re projecting onto others, but still --  _ still _ . The last thing Owen wants is to pry.

It’s none of his  _ business _ , dammit.

“Good evening, Dr. Grant,” says Claire, the perfect image of polite sincerity. Owen fumbles with the kombucha and thinks maybe this is why his old life involved mostly just reptile birds.

**

“She’s recently divorced,” Gray informs him with gravitas over the annoyingly good Skype connection. “I looked her up.”

“Gray,” says Owen, wishing that he was a religious man so that he could pray to the heavens for assistance. “You know what I’d love? If you could tell me more about prehistoric rock formations in Hawaii.”

“I  _ will _ ,” says Gray, serenely unperturbed by Owen’s deflection of his attempts to rekindle the romance of the age. “I’m just  _ saying _ .”

“You’re always just saying,” says Owen, a little helplessly. Claire gets back from work later than he does, today, which means he’s dealing with the empty apartment by calling his thirteen year old friend-slash-not-quite-nephew-yet in Wisconsin. He lives an incredibly healthy and well-adjusted life, he told the therapist, back when he had a damn therapist.

They still haven’t gotten a dog. Owen wishes they would, so he doesn’t have to feel bad about talking to Gray. Not that it’s entirely on Owen; Claire told him to call, because apparently the boys are coming to visit for a few days so as not to feel weirdly about Karen’s going on a weekend-long date with the very nice man from work.

At least she’s getting  _ out _ there, Claire had said, the vision of pragmatism and sisterly support.

Owen, for very obviously selfish reasons, protested. “They’re going to try and  _ matchmake old people _ , Claire.”

“Everyone needs a  _ hobby _ ,” Claire had said .

Owen focuses back to his phone. Maybe he can convince the kids that their weekend here would be best spent in the wilds of the wilderness, camping. Hardcore camping. Not a phone or down-on-his-romantic-luck paleontologist in sight. He could teach them how to start fires from scratch.

Claire would one hundred percent veeto that idea, but it relaxes him to consider it as a  _ possibility _ , so he does.

“Should I bring my books with me?” asks Gray. “I want to ask him some questions.”

“For the last time,” Owen says, “you are  _ not _ talking to Alan Grant about his love life.”

“I  _ meant _ my dinosaur books,” says Gray, sounding far too smug for a thirteen year old. Owen tries his best to look unimpressed; it only somewhat works, as children become irritatingly endeared to you when you’ve lived through dinosaur doomsday with them and you’re dating their favorite aunt. 

At least the kids’ visit isn’t until July.

**

On the thirty-first of June Owen gets career advice from a chaotician.

It’s not the weirdest experience of his lifetime, mostly.

“ _ Taming the Wild Beast _ , with Owen Grady,” says Malcom, spreading his hands flat in the air. “I can see it already.”

“I’m not starting my own TV show,” protests Owen, who has somehow conned himself into buying a sandwich from Subway again, and into eating that sandwich surrounded by what Gray would probably call living scientific legends and Zach would call old people in an attempt to pretend like he didn’t go and look them all up after Near Death By Dino. 

“I’m  _ not _ ,” he tries again, trying for  _ stern _ and landing on  _ spluttering _ .

Grant snorts from his desk, where he is alternating between pretending to be absorbed by paper-grading and shooting covert looks at a laughing Dr. Sattler, who is perched on the edge of his desk and swatting Malcom intermittently with a rolled up Cal State Alumni magazine she’d found on the ground. 

Malcom is seated in the chair opposite Owen and looks annoyingly comfortable. Who still wears hair gel in their sixties, anyway.

_ People wear all sorts of things at all ages _ , says the Claire in his head. Really says something about his mental state, Owen thinks, that the imaginary voice of his girlfriend in his own head still makes passive aggressive comments about his ownership of boardshorts on occasions like this. 

Malcom shakes his head and waves his hands over his long legs, which are loosely crossed over each other like he’s some kind of edgy shrink. 

“No, no, not TV, no -- TV is the olden days, it’s YouTube -- it’s YouTube now.”

“I could picture a YouTube channel,” offers Dr. Sattler, eyes twinkling. Grant smiles foolishly at an undergrad paper titled  _ An Exploration of the Unique Feather Patterns on the Backside of Cretaceous Fauna _ , and Owen decides that this is it. This is ridiculous. 

“I’m not starting a YouTube channel, either,” he says, because his current profession may involve discussing the eating schedule of giant carnivorous bird lizards with a dinosaur scientist who is pining over another dinosaur scientist so hard they may as well be in a lumber mill, but he has  _ standards _ .

“Really?” asks Grant, one wry eyebrow raised over his marking. “No ambitions to become the next Steve Irwin?”

Owen narrows his eyes at the man who betrayed him and chides himself for ever assuming that Grant wouldn’t know who Steve Irwin was.

Dr. Sattler says, “Now I could  _ definitely _ picture that,” like she’s his encouraging Aunt Linda or something. Grant’s smile softens, and he looks at her with a wistful expression on his face.

Okay. So Owen’s officially outnumbered. He’s also not too bitter about it -- A, because Claire will probably find this all hilarious when he tells her, and despite the fact that she will definitely be laughing at him, he loves her laugh; and B, because Grant is looking more helpless by the day. Probably enough that Grey’s matchmaking schemes are not entirely unneeded.

Owen watches as the feathery backsides student is given a B-minus, then slowly turns his head offers Malcom a resigned look.

“I will. Take it into consideration.”

“I like him,” Malcom tells Dr. Sattler, as though Owen isn’t in the room, literally in front of him.

“He doesn’t like you,” says Grant, not looking up from his papers. 

Sattler laughs again, and puts her hand on Grant’s shoulder.

On the other hand, Owen thinks, Grant’ll probably be just fine. There is no reason in the given world why he would need Owen’s, or anyone else’s, help, and that’s just plain as day.

**

“I need your help,” says Dr. Grant. 

He sounds like he’s about to announce that dinosaurs are rampaging through San Diego again and Owen, personally, is the only individual who can stop them.

Owen blinks from the doorway, where he’s holding another God damned Subway sandwich and a heavy book on the mating patterns of birds of prey. “Help,” repeats Owen, a little bit dumbly, like he’s forgotten the word. Grant seems to think so too, because he grabs his hat from where it’s sitting on the desk and waves it a little in front of him. His beard is uncombed, which makes him look more crazy than stressed, but Owen figures that this is just a natural look to arrive at when your entire life is spent studying dinosaurs.

“Yes, help, help!” Grant huffs, and paces a few times behind his desk, and lifts one plaid-shirt-clad arm to scratch at the back of his neck. “I am -- this is ridiculous, but I don’t know what to do. And I can’t ask Ian, because he’s -- useless.” He looks up. 

“Help,” he repeats.

“In what,” asks Owen, slowly, more slowly than he’s ever spoken before, even when Blue was about to bite off his hand that one time.

He’s always had a great instinct for sensing doom before it actually arrives.

Grant’s face goes a mottled pink colour. 

“I don’t know how to ask Ellie out again.”

Huh, thinks Owen.

_ Huh _ .

**

“You said -- young man, who are you again?”

“My name’s Gray,” says Gray, standing in the middle of Alan Grant’s extremely professorial office and looking not a bit out of place due to the large stack of books held in his arms and the dirtied backpack hanging from his shoulders, which are covered by a bright red t-shirt advertising the Madison Public School Science Olympics Team.

On the top of his book pile is  _ Diva Debut: 5 Quick Tips On How To Get Out Into The Dating World After A Divorce _ . It’s perched perilously on Owen’s bird mating manual.

“Gray,” says Dr. Grant, looking a little lost.

“Gray Mitchel,” Gray confirms. 

Grant’s office is markedly different from the apartment, which Claire says is done very modern whites and greys, and the Madison house, which still has wallpaper on the walls. It’s also markedly different from the now-demolished Innovation Center, or the dented back of a medical truck. Grant’s office is painted this weird tan colour. Or it would be, if bookshelves didn’t cover every inch of the walls. Most of the shelves don’t actually house books, but big crates, filled with digging equipment.

It’s really weird to see Gray standing in the middle of it, looking like he belongs. Grant doesn’t seem to be getting  _ why _ he belongs, though, and Owen feels the need to Explain.

“He’s my. Uh.” He flounders, waving his hand a little vaguely.

“Nephew,” says Gray, with supreme confidence. Zach’s with Claire, grocery shopping, which means they will buy three bags of jasmine rice so Claire feels responsible and two family-sized jumbo pizzas because she can never say no to the boys. Owen, for the first time, does not regret his genius decision to actually encourage Gray’s interests. 

“Right,” says Owen. 

He wonders if Claire, on her very Californian grocery run, is aware of this new development.

“I’m a huge fan of your work,” Gray continues, “but also, my mom just got divorced, and I’ve been reading.”

Grant looks up slowly, until he locks eyes with Owen in an objectively desperate fashion.

Owen shrugs in a  _ what can you do _ kind of way over Gray’s head.

**

It’s actually pretty fortuitous that the kids visit landed when it did, Owen tells Claire. Almost like it was planned in advance by an expert planner. 

Claire tells him not to be silly with great dignity and then takes an extremely guilty sip of her lemon sparkling water.

Owen wouldn’t be so quick to accuse, if not for the fact that he’s currently huddled in the corner booth of a decently nice bistro with a lunch-time special, wedged between Clair’s bare shoulder and Zach’s backpack. It’s a nice place -- open concept, not too crowded, which means that their ridiculous camp out at table B is bound to be noticed if either of their target table’s occupants decide to turn their head three degrees West. But it’s apparently the only place that sells a classy Italian wedding soup, so here they are. Sardined into a booth that’s made entirely of polished wood. Owen’s ass is slowly going numb. 

“What I don’t understand,” Owen begins, and then is promptly shushed by his entourage, all of whom do shushing by flapping their hands. 

He saw Karen do it, once. It must be a Dearing thing.

“She’s  _ here _ ,” says Gray, like he’s declaring the entrance of the Queen of England herself.

The problem, Owen thinks, is that you can’t do a stakeout like  _ this  _ and be the kind of person who  _ flaps your hands _ like  _ that _ . People will  _ see _ you. Hand-flapping draws  _ attention _ .

Admittedly, this isn’t exactly a military operation. Or a zoological one. Owen watches, with the same bated breath as everyone else at his cramped booth, as Dr. Ellie Sattler herself arrives at the table they’re spying on and puts her purse down. There’s a big smile on her face as Grant scrambles to his feet, tries and fails to pull her seat out for her, and then laughs awkwardly before leaning over and giving her a hug.

It looks a bit disastrous, but Ellie’s still smiling when the dust clears, and if Owen’s any good at reading people, it looks genuine.

“This was a  _ great _ plan,” whispers Grey loudly, from his position kneeling on the embroidery covered booth bench so he can see over the top of Zach’s head. Zach, who is grinning, fist-bumps him. Claire smiles serenely at Owen over the rim of her sparkling water, but her smile is once again impish. It’s a good thing she once literally saved his life, because she has a habit of never coming to his rescue in times like this. This is why he wants to get a dog -- a dog would never betray him like this.

“What I still don’t understand,” Owen says,  _ again _ , “is why we’re still  _ here _ .”

You can’t set up an entire date around Dr. Sattler meeting a middle school paleobotany enthusiast planning him to not show up to the restaurant because of a mysterial head cold, only for him to _actually_ _show up_ _to the restaurant_.

With his older brother, aunt, and aunt’s long-suffering boyfriend in tow.

You can’t  _ do _ that.

“Owen,” says Zach, “ _ shhh _ .”

“They’re  _ talking _ ,” adds Grey.

“Look,” says Claire, eyes as sparkling as her stupid water, “aren’t they sweet.”

This is true, Owen has to allow, especially given Grant’s relaxed a little bit and not longer looks like he’s about to metaphorically eat his own hat again. Sattler leans in, clearly saying something teasing, and Grant bows his head almost bashfully.

It’s  _ really _ weird. But a little cute, Owen thinks.

“Okay,” he says. “We came, we spied, we succeeded.” Claire raises an eyebrow at him from the general vicinity of his shoulder. “We  _ did _ ,” he says. “We should -- let them -- you know --”

He waves his hands vaguely.

“Wait -- he said something, she’s making a face,” says Zach, smacking Owen lightly in the chest and leaning over the table to he can stare more intently. 

“What,” says Gray. “Zach, what!  _ What _ , Zach --”

“Shh -- shut up, she looks disappointed.”

“You don’t know what it’s about!” says Gray. “She could think the sparkly water tastes gross!”

“Gray, sit down in your seat,” says Claire, holding her sparkling water defensively. Owen raises his eyebrows at her to indicate his thoughts and opinions on sparkling water via telepathy, which is a bad idea, because it means he’s taken his eyes off Gray.

Which means Gray has, as opposed to sitting down, stood all the way up.

“Don’t be disappointed Dr. Sattler!” he yells, across the full beach-side restaurant, for all to Goddamn hear, from over his older brother’s head. “Just give Dr. Grant a chance!”

The restaurant slowly goes silent, like a burnt out motorcycle engine. 

Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler turn, very slowly, to look at where they are all seated. Claire manages to set down her water and lift two menus up in front of she and Owen’s faces in one smooth motion.

God, she is the most capable woman he’s ever met.

She has short arms, though, which means the top of the second menu only reaches the vicinity of his nose. He therefore has a perfect vantage point for seeing Grant groan and bury his face in his hands. 

Owen’s definitely losing his job.

“ _ Gray _ ,” says Zach, who up until this point has been as frozen as his younger brother, post-mid-restaurant-plea. Owen nearly misses Grant gesturing something desperately, because he’s too busy trying to quietly leverage Claire’s arm up a little higher so that the stupid menu covers the rest of his very-fired face.

Maybe  _ Taming the Wild Beast _ with Owen Grady is not the worst idea in the world.

But then -- Sattler’s laughing, again. It’s a nice laugh, Owen thinks. He can sort of hear it over the crowd, because everyone’s staring at them in light of their being resident morons.

And then she leans over and kisses Grant on the cheek.

Owen stops pushing up Claire’s arm. Claire lets her menu slowly slide down. Gray has finally lost his balance, and is now half-sitting on Owen’s shoulder.

Zach says,

“Guess she’s into weirdos, huh.”

Gray looks ecstatic. “It’s  _ romantic _ . Isn’t it romantic? Uncle Owen, isn’t it romantic?”

Across the restaurant, it appears the ice has broken, and Grant and Sattler are leaning with their heads close together, talking animatedly about something. Probably dinosaurs, Owen thinks, because it’s always dinosaurs isn’t it, and Claire has her eyebrows raised again over the abandoned sparkling water. Which means she probably didn’t know about the whole Uncle Owen thing.

“Yeah,” says Owen, grinning at his weird family who are somehow infinitely better than prehistoric lizard birds. “Yeah, Gray, it’s pretty romantic.”

**

Next Thursday, Owen remembers not to get lunch from Subway, and Grant’s grin when he opens the door to his office is almost blinding.

Pretty good for a guy who nearly got eaten twice in his lifetime, Owen thinks, and begins with, “So, I’m thinking of getting a dog.”


End file.
